Monday, November 28, 2016

Another Piece of the Broken Government Puzzle

J.P. McJefferson
J.P. McJeffersonhttp://jpmcjefferson.blogspot.com/

There are many confusing explanations in response to this question, but it’s a simple matter of state votes vs. public or popular votes. When you vote for President, you are actually voting to determine how your state will vote for President — you are not voting directly for the President.
Frankly, I could care less, how my state votes for the President, yet it is one of the primary reasons for the electoral college process. It’s all about big states vs. little states. The Founders had a fear that under the popular vote, the choice of President would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones. When they wrote the constitution, this was a big deal with the limitations of travel and communication. Obviously, a candidate could campaign in a few large states, save money, time and likely get elected.
In today’s world, the process is totally meaningless and irrelevant and yet we continue to use the same antiquated process over 200 years after it was instituted. It has now led to two unprecedented Presidential elections in the last 16 years where the states elected George Bush and Donald Trump, but the public elected Al Gore and Hillary Clinton by over 500,000 and 2.23 million votes, respectively.
Another reason for the electoral college process was to prevent a charismatic tyrant from fooling the public and attracting a majority of the popular vote. The Founders reasoned that the electoral college process would allow a more knowledgeable group of savy electors to override a misinformed public. As you might expect, there are various opinions on whether that “check and balance” actually works.